Catégorie : Understanding Today’s Culture (EN)

Understanding Today’s Culture brings together micro-essays about human experience in a global networked culture. This cultural chronicle explores contemporary transformations in culture, memory, digital networks and artificial intelligence through everyday human experience.

The Horizon of Circulation

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How Mediators Transform the Journey of Works, Ideas and Knowledge

Perspective spheres illustrating the horizon of circulation of works, ideas and knowledge through the cultural mediators of each era.

Read this article in French:
L’horizon de circulation

This article grew out of my observations of the Web since the mid-1990s. Here is what I have observed. Let us look at it together.

You connect to the Internet. You perform a search. A few seconds later, you discover a text written by someone living on the other side of the world. It is written in a language you do not understand. An artificial intelligence instantly translates it for you. You begin reading immediately.

This experience has become so commonplace that it now seems perfectly natural. Yet only a few decades ago, such an encounter with another culture would have been difficult, if not impossible, for most people.

This raises an obvious question: what made this encounter possible?

The most immediate answer is the Internet, search engines, digital platforms and, more recently, artificial intelligence. These technologies undeniably play an essential role. Every day, they make billions of publications accessible to millions of people around the world.

Yet, when we look more closely at this evolution, another reality emerges.

Search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence may simply be the latest representatives of a much older story: the story of mediators.

Throughout history, works, ideas and knowledge have circulated through intermediaries that transmit, preserve, organize and make them accessible. Depending on the period, these mediators have taken many different forms: storytellers, scribes, copyists, printers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, critics, journalists, publishers, search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence.

Technologies change. Mediators evolve. Yet the human need remains the same: to transmit works, ideas and knowledge to other people.

This reflection gradually emerged from my observations of the Web since the mid-1990s and from more than twenty years of publishing on the Internet. I have published artworks, texts, poems and essays online throughout that time. Over the years, I have witnessed the emergence of search engines, social media, digital platforms and, more recently, generative artificial intelligence. Each of these transformations has changed the way publications can be discovered and circulate.

Little by little, one question kept returning.

Why do some publications seem capable of travelling across the world while others remain almost invisible, even when they appear equally valuable?

Concepts such as visibility, discoverability, dissemination and transmission help explain part of this reality. More recently, digital marketing has popularized the notion of reach, which measures the number of people a publication can reach within a given context.

These concepts are essential. Yet, through years of observation, I gradually came to feel that they described only part of the phenomenon.

They explain how a publication becomes visible, how it can be found, or how many people it reaches. They account less well, however, for another dimension: the potential journey that a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge can undertake according to the mediators available in a given period. Yet it is precisely this evolution that makes new encounters possible between publications and human beings.

This observation gradually led me to propose another way of looking at the circulation of publications.

I call the horizon of circulation the potential extent of the journey that a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge can undertake, as made possible by the mediators of a given era.

How Mediators Transform the Horizon of Circulation

When we look at the history of cultural transmission from this perspective, a clear pattern gradually emerges.

Every era introduces new mediators that transform the ways works, ideas and knowledge can circulate.

For thousands of years, oral tradition was the primary means of transmission. Stories, songs, knowledge and traditions were passed on through the memory of individuals and communities. The horizon of circulation was therefore relatively limited. A work could survive for generations, but its journey depended entirely on the people who remembered and transmitted it.

The invention of writing profoundly changed this situation. Ideas no longer depended solely on human memory. They could be recorded, preserved and copied. Manuscripts enabled certain works to survive long after their authors had disappeared, even though their circulation remained limited by the slow work of copyists and the small number of available copies.

The printing press marked another major turning point. Producing hundreds, and later thousands, of copies of the same book became possible. Booksellers, publishers and libraries, in turn, expanded the possibilities for circulation. Works could now reach a much wider audience.

Over the following centuries, other mediators appeared: schools, universities, critics, newspapers, radio, television and numerous cultural institutions. Each contributed, in its own way, to the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge.

The arrival of the Web opened a new chapter.

For the first time in history, a single publication could become accessible almost instantly on a global scale. This does not mean that it will be read everywhere. It does, however, radically transform the possibilities of its journey.

Search engines, followed by digital platforms and, more recently, artificial intelligence, have extended this evolution. They create new possibilities for circulation and, in turn, reshape the ways works, ideas and knowledge can be discovered.

Looking back at this succession of transformations, one idea gradually becomes clear.

Each era changes more than the means of transmission. It also transforms the potential extent of the journey that a publication can undertake.

For this reason, I find it useful to speak of a horizon of circulation, rather than simply of dissemination.

The image of a horizon evokes a space of possibilities.

As new mediators emerge, this space expands, changes and is continually reconfigured. New paths become possible, while others gradually lose their importance.

New mediators do not necessarily replace the previous ones. Oral tradition still exists. Printed books continue to circulate. Libraries, teachers and cultural institutions remain essential actors in the transmission of knowledge and culture.

Each era therefore adds new mediators that gradually reshape the possibilities for the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge.

It is this continuous evolution — from the earliest oral traditions to today’s algorithmic mediators — that the concept of the horizon of circulation seeks to make visible.

A Horizon of Circulation Is Not a Guarantee of Dissemination

The concept of the horizon of circulation does not seek to predict the fate of a publication.

It simply describes the possibilities made available by the mediators of a given era.

To better understand this idea, let us consider the example of a poem.

A poem may be recited at a poetry reading before an audience of ten people. It may also be published in a printed collection distributed through a handful of bookstores, reaching a few hundred readers.

The same poem can also be published on the Web. It then becomes potentially accessible to readers all over the world. Search engines can index it. Digital platforms can recommend it. An artificial intelligence can quote it, summarize it or present it to someone who might otherwise never have encountered its author.

Yet the poem itself has not changed.

What has changed is not the work.

What has changed is the range of possible journeys it may take.

That is precisely what I call its horizon of circulation.

This does not mean that the poem will necessarily be read by thousands of people. It may remain almost invisible despite this much broader horizon.

A horizon of circulation does not describe what will actually happen.

It describes what has become possible.

This distinction allows us to differentiate the horizon of circulation, which represents the journey potentially made possible by the mediators of a given era, from effective circulation, that is, the journey a publication actually follows.

The two concepts are complementary. The horizon of circulation describes a space of possibilities, while effective circulation tells the actual story of a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge.

The concept of the horizon of circulation therefore does not replace notions such as visibility, discoverability, dissemination, transmission or reach.

It simply offers another way of observing the phenomenon.

Rather than focusing only on what a publication actually achieves, it invites us to consider the range of journeys that mediators make possible in a given period.

Mediators continue to evolve, and with them, the possibilities for the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge. Understanding this evolution may also help us better understand how global networked culture continues to change.

A broader horizon of circulation does not guarantee the long-term survival of a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge. It can, however, multiply the opportunities for it to be rediscovered, transmitted, translated, archived or brought back into circulation over time. A horizon of circulation does not ensure permanence, but it can help create the conditions that make it possible.

Every publication is a fragment of humanity. A trace entrusted to the mediators of its time and launched toward its own horizon of circulation.

Further Reading

This article is part of a broader reflection on the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge within global networked culture.

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 How Far Can a Publication Go?

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 Understanding Today’s Culture

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

How Far Can a Publication Go?

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The Horizon of Circulation in Global Culture

Black-and-white checkered spheres gradually receding into a vast white space, illustrating the horizon of circulation of works, ideas and knowledge through cultural mediators.

Read this article in French:
Jusqu’où une publication peut-elle aller ?

An everyday scene:

You log on.
You search for a topic that interests you.
Within seconds, you find a fascinating article.
You read it.

Then you discover that it was written by someone living on the other side of the world and translated so that you could read it.

You realize that only a few decades ago, you probably would never have had access to that text.

What made this encounter possible?

For centuries, works, ideas and knowledge have circulated through mediators such as storytellers, scribes, booksellers, librarians, teachers and critics. Today, new algorithmic mediators — search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence — also play an essential role in their circulation.

In our example, it is precisely these new mediators that made this encounter possible.

Mediators make encounters possible. But their ability to circulate a publication also depends on the way it is published.

Choosing how to publish

Take the example of a poet who wishes to share a poem.

The poet may choose to recite the poem during a poetry reading before an audience of about ten people, without publishing it.

The poet may also decide to publish it in a printed poetry collection distributed through a few bookstores, reaching a few hundred readers.

Or the poet may publish it online, where it can be shared, indexed by search engines, recommended by digital platforms, sometimes cited by artificial intelligence, and discovered by tens of thousands of readers around the world.

The poem is exactly the same.

What changes is the potential extent of its journey.

This is what I call the horizon of circulation.

Several ways of making a text accessible coexist. If we choose to publish it, each publishing method opens a different horizon of circulation. The chosen method of publication therefore influences the potential extent of the circulation of a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge.

I have used the example of a poem, but the same phenomenon applies to every publication: a work of art, an idea, a piece of knowledge or even a simple personal testimony.

Algorithmic mediators now allow certain publications to reach a horizon of circulation on the scale of global culture.

Choosing how to publish also means choosing how far a publication may potentially travel.

📚 View all Micro-Essays

This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a chronicle of global networked culture.

→ Back to the Micro-Essays page

Further Reading

🟦 You Already Use Artificial Intelligence

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 The Horizon of Circulation

🟦 AI in Art: Beyond Creation, the Algorithms That Organize Global Culture

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Already Use Artificial Intelligence

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The Real Impact of AI on Art and Culture

Black-and-white cube symbolizing the circulation of culture through digital networks, featuring the silhouette of a human observer. Illustration for the micro-essay "You Already Use Artificial Intelligence."

Read this article in French:
Vous utilisez déjà l’intelligence artificielle

An everyday moment:

You log on.

You are looking for something to read. You ask a search engine a question. A streaming platform recommends a film. An artificial intelligence suggests new cultural discoveries.

A few seconds later, it feels as though you have simply found what you were looking for.

Yet something important has just happened…

You have encountered culture in a way that is very different from how your parents or grandparents did.

For centuries, we have discovered culture and knowledge through mediators: a library, a bookseller, a teacher, a critic… or simply a friend.

Like many people of my generation, I spent years discovering culture exclusively through human mediators.

Today, new mediators have joined this long history… and they are no longer human.

Who now guides our cultural discoveries?

Global culture has become a continuous flow in motion.

Works of art, books, films, articles and ideas no longer circulate only through libraries, booksellers, critics and cultural institutions.

They now move through a vast network where search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence also help shape their circulation.

In reality, we have already been accompanied for decades by new mediators that quietly organize part of our encounters with culture.

Whether we realize it or not, we already use artificial intelligence when we search the Internet, watch a video on YouTube, receive a recommendation for a film, a song, a book or an article, or simply when social media platforms decide what appears in our news feeds.

The greatest impact of artificial intelligence is not its ability to create images, texts or music. Its greatest impact lies in its role as a mediator, helping shape our cultural discoveries and the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge.

The mediators are changing. Increasingly, they take the form of search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence.

Our desire to discover, share and pass on culture, however, remains profoundly human.

📚 View all Micro-Essays

This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a chronicle of global networked culture.

→ Back to the Micro-Essays page

Further Reading

🟦 Everyone Already Uses AI

🟦 How Far Can a Publication Go?

🟦 The Use of AI in Art: Beyond Creation – Algorithms That Organize Global Culture

🟦 You Already Choose Your Culture

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 Understanding Today’s Culture – View All Micro-Essays

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

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A Reflection on Visibility, Discoverability and Human Encounter

Multilingual mosaic of culture and footprints crossing a network of digital content, illustrating the journey from human traces to visibility, discoverability, human encounter and transmission.

Read this article in French:
Vous publiez… mais êtes-vous vraiment vu ?

I publish often… but I don’t always have readers.

For more than twenty years, I have been publishing works, poems, essays, videos and images on the Web. Some of these publications find their readers. Others remain almost invisible. As I tried to understand why some publications are seen while others pass almost unnoticed, I believed I was simply reflecting on how the digital world works. I had no idea that this question would lead me much further.

When a Simple Question Becomes a Reflection

At first, my question was very simple.

Why do some publications seem to circulate naturally while others remain almost invisible despite all the care devoted to creating them?

Like many people who publish online, I first looked for answers in search engines, social media, algorithms and digital platforms. I learned how to improve the indexing of my content, how to work with metadata and how to increase its discoverability. Yet, despite all these efforts, the question continued to trouble me.

Little by little, three words kept returning in my reading and in my observations:

visibility
discoverability
encounter

Visibility allows content to exist in the public space.
Discoverability increases the chances that it can be found.
But one question remained.

What happens next?

What happens when a text, an image, a photograph, a video or an idea finally becomes visible? What happens when it can finally be discovered?

For a long time, I believed these two concepts were enough to explain how content circulates in the digital world. Yet something seemed to be missing. A publication may be visible. It may even be easy to find. That does not necessarily mean it truly reaches someone.

That is when the third word began to take on greater importance.

Encounter.

At first, I simply understood it as the moment when a publication reaches its reader. A fairly natural idea, after all. But the more I observed the paths taken by my own publications, the more this notion grew in significance.

What Drawings in Caves Taught Me

Then, one day, an image came to mind.

I was thinking about prehistoric drawings discovered in caves that had remained inaccessible for centuries, sometimes for millennia.

The drawings had always existed.
The rock walls had preserved their traces.
Yet, during all that time, no one was looking at them anymore.
Then, one day, explorers rediscover these drawings.
Archaeologists study them.
Researchers try to understand their meaning.
Visitors contemplate them with amazement.
Suddenly, these works become part of our shared history once again.

That was the moment something changed in the way I saw things.

I was no longer looking only at the digital world.

I began to wonder whether the three words that kept returning in my reflection might actually describe something far older.

The works left by our ancestors were there.
They had become visible once again.
They had been discovered.
Then they encountered other human beings.
And that encounter allowed them, thousands of years later, to begin transmitting something once again.

For a long time, this remained only an intuition.

A Book Forgotten for More Than Half a Century

Some time later, a personal experience confirmed this intuition.

I bought a second-hand poetry collection that had been published more than half a century earlier.

The copy was signed by the author. Someone had received it when the book was launched in 1965. More than half a century later, it had left its owner’s personal library and found its way onto the shelves of a second-hand bookstore.

When I opened it, I noticed something I had never expected.

The pages were still uncut, just as they had been on the day the book was published. I had to cut open the top of the pages in order to read the text. For more than half a century, this particular copy had remained on the shelves of a private library without anyone ever opening its pages. I was the first person to read it.

I stood there for a moment, looking at the book.

It had travelled through time.
It had changed owners.
It had been carefully preserved.
Yet, throughout all those years, its reading had remained suspended.
Only when someone finally opened its pages did this work begin to live again.

A few weeks later, I published excerpts from this collection on my website so that other readers could discover it. By sharing these texts, I became a transmitter in my turn. A work that had remained silent for more than fifty years could now encounter new readers and continue its transmission.

At that moment, I realized that this story closely resembled the prehistoric cave paintings I had been thinking about.

Transmission does not depend only on the existence of a trace.
It also depends on the possibility that, one day, someone will encounter it.
A work may be preserved for centuries.
A book may remain untouched for more than half a century.
A publication may remain accessible on the Web for years.
But sooner or later, another human being must encounter it.
That encounter is what sets transmission in motion again.

One Story That Crosses Time

I then asked myself a very simple question.
What if this story was not only about cave drawings or a forgotten book?
What if it described something much more universal?

Human beings have always left traces behind.

A handprint on a rock wall.
A petroglyph.
A manuscript.
A letter.
A book.
A photograph.
A work of art.
An archive.
Today, a publication on the Web.

The media change.
Technologies evolve.
But the gesture remains.

We are always trying to pass something on.

An idea.
Knowledge.
An emotion.
An experience.
A value.
A memory.
A part of ourselves.

For a long time, I viewed the digital world as a parallel universe.
Today, I see it instead as the continuation of a much older human story.
Search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence do not replace this process of transmission. They become its new mediators.

A Framework for Understanding Human Transmission

For several months now, three words have remained at the heart of my reflection.

Visibility

A trace must first exist in the world.
It must be visible.

Discoverability

It must then be possible to find it.
Sometimes immediately.
Sometimes centuries later.

Human Encounter

Finally comes the moment when that trace reaches another human being.
That is the moment when transmission begins again.
A work, an idea, a piece of knowledge, a value, a memory or a testimony begins to produce meaning once more.

The concepts of visibility and discoverability are now well established in libraries, archives, cultural discoverability and the digital world.

Throughout this reflection, I gradually came to feel that a third moment deserved more attention.

Human encounter.

Not encounter understood as engagement, audience retention or platform performance.
But the encounter between a trace and a human being.

The moment when a work, an idea, knowledge, a value, a memory or a testimony begins to produce meaning once again.

Little by little, one idea imposed itself upon me.

I now have the feeling that this framework offers another way of understanding many forms of human transmission.

Trace → Visibility → Discoverability → Human Encounter → Transmission

Human beings have always left traces behind.
The media change.
Technologies evolve.
The mediators change.
But this journey remains.

Each generation adds new traces to those left by the generations before it.
Today, ours travel through digital networks.
Some will disappear into oblivion.
Others will continue their journey for decades, perhaps much longer.
We never know which ones.

But one thing seems to run through all of human history.

Without human encounter, there are only traces. With it, there is transmission.

Diagram illustrating the path of human transmission: Trace → Visibility → Discoverability → Human Encounter → Transmission.

Other Articles Related to This Reflection

🟦 Publishing Is Not Enough. You Also Need to Be Seen (Micro-Essay #4)

🟦 How Far Can a Publication Go?

🟦 The Horizon of Circulation

🟦 You Are Already Leaving Traces in Global Culture (Micro-Essay #5)

🟦 Human Traces in Global Culture

🟦 Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🌍Thinking About Culture

I invite you to explore Understanding Today’s Culture, a series of micro-essays devoted to human experience, contemporary culture, and our networked world.

→ Explore the Understanding Today’s Culture series

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Are Already Leaving Traces in Global Culture

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What Will Remain of You in the Future?

Illustration of world culture as a multilingual mosaic alongside the Network Walker, symbolizing human traces, time and cultural transmission.

Read this article in French:
Vous laissez déjà des traces dans la culture mondiale

An everyday scene:

I log in.
I publish a photograph on the Web.

Like everyone else, I wonder whether anyone will react.

A Like?
A comment?
A share?

I wonder how many people will see this post.

Today?
This week?
Next month?

Then other questions arise.

In a few years?
In a few decades?

What if this publication one day became a trace from the past?

The moment I click Publish, I am mostly thinking about the present. Yet this publication may continue its journey long after I am gone, reaching people I will never know.

Since the beginning of human history, people have sought to leave a part of themselves behind: a handprint on a cave wall, a petroglyph carved into stone, a manuscript, a book, a photograph, a work of art. Today, a publication on the Web.

Technologies change.
The human need remains.

We write, create, photograph, and share. The digital world did not invent our desire to pass something on. It has simply become the new place where this long story of human transmission continues to unfold.

Not every trace survives the passage of time. Many will be forgotten. Others will travel much farther than we can imagine. We never know which ones will continue their journey.

Every publication may become a small part of the world’s memory.

A photograph
A poem
An idea
A testimony
A work of art
A piece of knowledge

Each publication may add another fragment to the moving mosaic of global culture.

To continue their journey, these traces must first become visible. They must then be discoverable. One day, they may finally encounter another human being who gives them new meaning.

For thousands of years, the journey of human traces has followed the same path:

Visibility

Discoverability

Encounter

Every generation leaves traces. Ours travel through the network.

📚 See All Micro-Essays

This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a chronicle of global networked culture.

→ Back to the Micro-Essays page

Further Reading

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 Human Traces in Global Culture

🟦 Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

Publishing Is Not Enough. You Also Need the Chance to Be Seen.

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The Path from Visibility to Encounter

Multilingual mosaic of the word culture, young woman walking through a digital stream of online content and platforms, illustrating visibility, discoverability and cultural encounters in global networked culture.

Read this article in French:
Publier ne suffit plus. Encore faut-il pouvoir être vu.

A scene from everyday life:

I log in…

I publish a photo.

A text.

A video.

A reflection.

Sometimes what I publish is quickly seen and shared.

Sometimes it seems to disappear almost immediately.

Yet those posts still exist.

Today, billions of posts circulate through digital networks. Never before have so many people been able to share their ideas, knowledge, experiences, creations and discoveries so easily. Publishing has become an everyday act.

But publishing is no longer enough.

You also need the chance to be seen.

In my own case, I have been publishing artistic works and reflective essays on the Web for more than twenty years. Some quickly find their audience. Others seem to disappear into the digital limbo. There is nothing unusual about this experience. Today, anyone can see that some publications circulate widely while others remain almost invisible.

At its core, this is a deeply human experience. Publishing, communicating, hoping to be seen, to be discovered and to reach an audience have always been part of cultural transmission.

Throughout history, human beings have sought to pass on ideas, knowledge, experiences and creative works. Transmission is one of the great threads running through human history. The digital world did not create this aspiration. It has simply become its newest chapter.

In a world where everyone can publish, visibility has become a genuine cultural issue. Without visibility, ideas, knowledge and creative works may never reach the people who could give them new life.

What has changed with the digital age is the path that transmission now follows. Search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence have become new mediators between content and the people who may discover it. Today, this capacity to make content discoverable across the vastness of the Web has a name: discoverability.

Ultimately, visibility is not an end in itself. Being seen only truly matters when an idea reaches a curious mind, when knowledge finds someone who was looking for it, when a text, an image or a piece of music encounters a person who gives it new life through reading, listening, reflection or sharing.

Visibility makes it possible to be seen.

Discoverability makes it possible to be found.

Encounter is the true goal.

Culture has always lived through encounters.

📚 View All Micro-Essays

This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a cultural chronicle of global networked culture.

→ Back to the Micro-Essays page

Further Reading

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦  Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Already Choose Your Culture

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Building Your Culture, One Choice at a Time

Multilingual mosaic of the word culture, a person facing a digital stream of online content and platforms, illustrating the construction of a personal culture within global networked culture.

Read this article in French:
Vous choisissez déjà votre culture

A scene from everyday life.

I log in…

The Web offers me:

  • a Led Zeppelin concert;
  • a retrospective of Van Gogh’s works;
  • a documentary on climate change;
  • a talk on contemporary art;
  • an introduction to Chinese calligraphy;
  • a poetry reading.

I won’t watch everything.

I will choose.

Global networked culture has profoundly transformed the way we discover works, ideas, and knowledge. In just a few clicks, we can explore music, books, knowledge, traditions and creative works from almost every part of the world. Search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence have become the main mediators of our cultural discoveries. They suggest, recommend and organize a vast stream of content.

But they do not choose for us.

Culture is no longer only an inheritance. It has also become something we build ourselves.

It was not always this way.

When I was a teenager in the early 1970s, our opportunities for cultural discovery were far more limited than they are today. A few television channels, magazines, cinemas, live music performances, libraries and bookstores were our main gateways to works of art, ideas and knowledge.

Building a personal culture is a continuous process. It does not happen in a single day, but through the works, readings, discoveries and encounters that gradually shape our journey.

Every day, we choose the works we watch, the books we read, the music we listen to, the talks we attend and the subjects we decide to explore. Each choice may seem small. Yet, over time, these choices gradually shape our worldview, our references and our cultural identity.

Recommendations sometimes open doors to works we might never have discovered otherwise. They never replace our freedom to choose the direction of our own cultural journey.

The greatest cultural challenge is no longer gaining access to culture. It is learning to consciously build our own cultural path within an almost unlimited global cultural landscape.

Choosing fragments of global culture to enrich our own culture has become part of the human experience.

Scrolling is moving through the flow. Choosing is building your culture.

📚 View All Micro-Essays

This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a cultural chronicle of global networked culture.

→ Back to the Micro-Essays page

Further Reading

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

You Are Already Part of Global Culture

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Minimalist illustration showing an orange sphere beside a grid displaying the word “culture” in multiple languages, symbolizing that people already participate in global culture within an interconnected world.

Read this article in French:
Vous faites déjà partie de la culture mondiale

It is already part of your everyday reality, even if you do not always think about it.

• Every day, you choose fragments of global culture that interest you.

• You gradually build your own cultural mosaic.

• You already inhabit this interconnected world.

In the morning, you check the news on your phone. Later, you listen to music, watch a streaming series or search for information about a topic that intrigues you. Sometimes, you interact with people living in other countries.

All of this has become normal.

And yet, these ordinary actions already connect you to the rest of the world.

For you, global culture is not an abstract idea. It is already part of your everyday life.

You do not consume all of global culture. No one does. Instead, you choose fragments that attract your attention and gradually compose your own cultural mosaic.

Some people are interested in Japanese photography. Others discover South Korean artists, African writers, Spanish films or culinary traditions from elsewhere.

We all do this in our own way.

I often remember a particular scene. In 1974, I discovered Surrealism while watching slides projected onto a classroom wall. I was looking at reproductions of paintings by Salvador Dalí. Today, I discover fragments of global culture through search engines and artificial intelligence. The tools have changed, but the desire to discover the world has remained the same.

By observing this evolution over many years, I have realized that global culture is neither a distant phenomenon nor an idea reserved for specialists. It has already become part of our daily lives.

We have become inhabitants of a vast cultural space where everyone gradually builds their own mosaic.

Becoming aware of this reality changes the way we look at the world.

We are no longer just spectators. We already participate in this global culture through our choices and discoveries.

And perhaps, by taking a few moments to observe it, we will better understand the global culture that we are all building together.

It is your world,

it is mine,

and it is the one we already share.

📚 View All Micro-Essays

This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, an ongoing chronicle of global networked culture.

→ Return to the Micro-Essays page

Explore Further

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 The Network Walker — Traversing Global Culture in the Algorithmic Age

🟦 Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor

We Already Live in a Global Networked Culture

Publié le Publié dans Understanding Today's Culture (EN)Étiqueté , , , , , , , 1 Commentaire
Minimalist illustration showing a human hand pointing toward an abstract network-like form beside a grid displaying the word “culture” in multiple languages, symbolizing global networked culture.

Read this article in French:
Nous vivons déjà dans une culture mondiale en réseau

Global culture is no longer an idea of the future. It is already our reality.

Listening to a Korean song, watching a Spanish series, admiring photographs taken in Africa or reading a text written in China: we have all been doing these kinds of things for a long time.

Without always realizing it, we already live in a global networked culture.

For several decades now, culture has no longer been confined by borders. Creative works, ideas, stories, music and images constantly travel from one country to another and circulate at a speed never seen before.

This is no longer a phenomenon reserved for artists, academics or technology specialists. Ordinary people already participate in this global culture every day.

I myself live within this global culture and have been travelling through the network for many years, a bit like a Network Walker observing the cultural transformations of our time. By observing its evolution, I have come to realize that we still often speak about culture as if it were mainly local, even though our everyday experience has become profoundly global.

We discover creative works from the other side of the world. We follow events unfolding on other continents. We share ideas with people we may never meet.

We have already become inhabitants of a cultural space that extends far beyond geographical borders.

Becoming aware of this reality changes the way we look at the world.

Global networked culture is not a distant place, nor an abstract idea reserved for specialists. It is simply the world we already inhabit.

And perhaps, by taking a few moments to observe it, we will better understand the culture we all share.

📚 View All Micro-Essays

This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, an ongoing chronicle of global networked culture.

→ Return to the Micro-Essays page

Explore Further

🟦 The Network Walker — Traversing Global Culture in the Algorithmic Age

🟦 Inhabiting the Network — A New Human Condition in Global Culture

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor